Dominion Strategy Forum

Dominion => Game Reports => Help! => Topic started by: SwitchedFromStarcraft on November 22, 2012, 11:09:13 am

Title: Another miss - needed remodel?
Post by: SwitchedFromStarcraft on November 22, 2012, 11:09:13 am
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201211/22/game-20121122-080103-d9c8867a.html

I thought for a long time about all the $4 cards that looked better to me for my $5 opening than Stables, and bought Stables anyway.  Would remodel be better here? (I'm starting to think remodel should be bought before almost anything else, after feedback on my previous posts of losing games.)

I know the early Quarry was likely a mistake, but I was thinking Talisman when I bought it, to double up on Farming Villages and Smithys. So that plan fell apart quickly. Plus I had the opposite of my normal money draws, and was quickly to $6 a lot, so I bought golds, instead of engine components, and the quarry's price reduction feature wasn't all that helpful.

We both bemoaned not buying chapel, but I feared it would be too slow, even with the expected longer game with Colonies.  I should have bought Spice Merchant earlier or one more, as I had two turns with wasted money (16$ and 19$, each of which scored colonies only.) 

Any thoughts?
Title: Re: Another miss - needed remodel?
Post by: Rabid on November 22, 2012, 01:25:38 pm
I think you want chapel here.
For example: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201211/22/game-20121122-102045-55228e50.html
Title: Re: Another miss - needed remodel?
Post by: DG on November 22, 2012, 02:26:56 pm
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201211/22/game-20121122-112045-a756cd9f.html (http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201211/22/game-20121122-112045-a756cd9f.html). Not my best work but it shows the sort of thing you can do here. You can use the spice merchant to trim out some of the copper and this allows the upgrade and remodel to work on the estates and higher value cards for more benefit. With no useful extra buy in the kingdom, the card gaining is an important way to improve your deck. This is especially true when you can harness the drawing power within the kingdom.

I'm afraid the stables isn't good enough for an opening buy. You start by discarding copper to get copper and estates. The quarry never comes into it either since you can gain the cheap actions components but you need to buy the expensive treasures.
Title: Re: Another miss - needed remodel?
Post by: RisingJaguar on November 22, 2012, 03:06:11 pm
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201211/22/game-20121122-112045-a756cd9f.html (http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201211/22/game-20121122-112045-a756cd9f.html). Not my best work but it shows the sort of thing you can do here. You can use the spice merchant to trim out some of the copper and this allows the upgrade and remodel to work on the estates and higher value cards for more benefit. With no useful extra buy in the kingdom, the card gaining is an important way to improve your deck. This is especially true when you can harness the drawing power within the kingdom.

I'm afraid the stables isn't good enough for an opening buy. You start by discarding copper to get copper and estates. The quarry never comes into it either since you can gain the cheap actions components but you need to buy the expensive treasures.
To be fair, stable/chapel probably beats out SM/chapel, SM/nothing.  Although I agree that SM/silver looks quite enticing at 4/3 over 5/2 options. 
Title: Re: Another miss - needed remodel?
Post by: dondon151 on November 22, 2012, 03:21:17 pm
I would think that Upgrade is a better open at $5 than Stables.
Title: Re: Another miss - needed remodel?
Post by: RisingJaguar on November 22, 2012, 03:29:56 pm
I would think that Upgrade is a better open at $5 than Stables.
Upgrade/chapel > stable chapel? on a board with no +buy? 

The no +buy means overtrashing is a serious risk.  That's why I don't like the prospects of opening upgrade. 
Title: Re: Another miss - needed remodel?
Post by: dondon151 on November 22, 2012, 03:41:37 pm
Then don't overtrash. Upgrade gets you Silvers in your deck faster.

EDIT: Pardon the deluge of game logs, but here's a solitaire of my own:  http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201211/22/game-20121122-124944-dc6a558b.html

I don't trash extremely aggressively here and Upgrade lets me change the Chapel into something more useful once it's done its job. Once you grab the first couple of Colonies, Remodel Colony -> Colony to accelerate the endgame for a win.
Title: Re: Another miss - needed remodel?
Post by: DG on November 22, 2012, 05:00:34 pm
Quote
The no +buy means overtrashing is a serious risk.  That's why I don't like the prospects of opening upgrade. 

The lack of +buy means that turning your 2 coin estates into 3 coin assets is a big bonus.
Title: Re: Another miss - needed remodel?
Post by: zahlman on November 22, 2012, 11:58:08 pm
Honestly, Upgrade/Chapel was my first thought. Stables is largely about discarding Copper to find your better Treasure (or engine parts), and to me that conflicts with trying to get rid of your Copper ASAP with a strong trasher. Upgrade can get you Silvers from your Estates and later from your Chapel itself, so that it doesn't end up as a dead card.

I think just taking a Smithy is fine for draw here, too. I played Upgrades speculatively, and when they didn't hit what I wanted, Silver-> Smithy, Smithy->Upgrade and Upgrade->Gold don't really hurt (as long as you have an eye on the count of each, I guess).

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201211/22/game-20121122-205430-7caf0f35.html

And yeah, Remodel is nice too (Colony->Colony when ahead, Platinum->Colony when desperate) as usual.

ETA - going to try to make the argument a little clearer. With Chapel, the goals are (a) trash 4 cards at a time; (b) get better Treasure while you still can. Yeah? So.

Stables doesn't help you trash 4 cards, because you can do that whenever you want anyway.

Stables doesn't help you get better Treasure early, because:

Say you draw it in a way that you end up not colliding with the Chapel. Okay, if you're incredibly lucky, you might draw Stables-Copper-Copper-Copper-Copper, play Stables, discard a Copper and draw 3 more, for an early Gold. But otherwise, you're buying a Silver that you would have been nearly guaranteed anyway. In fact, it would be 100% guaranteed if you had bought Silver instead of the Stables, and then it'd be your second. Plus, even if you did get that draw with the Stables - if it were a Silver, you'd still get the Gold, so the only benefit you got otherwise was deck cycling. The Silver is actually much more likely to get you that Gold, since you don't need a lucky action-draw to go along with your initial lucky hand draw.

Now, say you draw it in a way that *does* collide with the Chapel. After the discard and draw, you have 7 cards in your hand, 1 of which is Chapel. You want to use the Chapel to trash 4 cards, so now you only have 2 in hand. So you can't afford Silver now, or else the Stables cost you a card worth of trashing. Granted, sometimes Silver will, too, but the point is that Stables certainly doesn't *help* you here.

Now, let's consider Upgrade.

Draw it not colliding. There's a very good chance it lines up with an Estate; even if you drew Upgrade with 4 Coppers, there's now a 3/7 chance that you pull Estate into your hand with Upgrade (Actually, 1/2 as a conditional probability, since this is the "not colliding" case). So now you got a Silver, and helped the Chapel to trash.

Draw it colliding. Well, the Upgrade's trash is redundant with the Chapel's, but at least it didn't *reduce* your trashing capability (the way Silver would have, by virtue of being an unsuitable target). Plus maybe you get a Silver out of it.

The only thing you sacrifice vs. Stables is the *tiny* chance of an early Gold, and a bit of cycling that I can't really imagine mattering.